Where Is Pittsburgh?

Pittsburgh

Okay, I didn’t intend to come back to the cats this quickly. I will make it brief.

Pittsburgh the kitten disappeared yesterday. I am going to tell you what happened and ask those of you who are of a felineous nature to see if you can explain it.

Pittsburgh is the most gregarious of Grandpa’s three kittens. He’s the one who petitions for rubs, and purrs like an engine at Daytona-level decibels. He is not skittish. He is comfortable around people.

Yesterday was the one day a month that our house cleaners come. In preparation, we herded the cats, and the dog, and us, into the basement. But one of the kittens — Pittsburgh — could not be located quickly enough. This did not surprise us. The kits roam the house fearlessly ever since a couple of weeks ago, when they graduated from the basement, which is mostly an unfinished, cement-floor milieu. From birth, the kittens had never before had access to the part of the house where the cleaning was done. From birth, they have never known — never even seen — anyone but Rachel and me.

The cleaners are Gi and Cris, a young married couple who speak mostly in Portuguese. We speak mostly in English, but all of us have enough Spanish to communicate. Gi and Cris arrived with their equipment. No small animal ran out the door when we opened it for them.

Gi and Cris started on the top floor and, when done, went to the main floor. We’d let them in at 1:15, and they were done at 3:15. We walked them out. Pittsburgh was nowhere to be seen.

“Viste una gatita?” I asked Gi. No, she said. No kitten.

Nor was he seen by us for the next two hours. It’s a small house and we examined every crook and nanny. Under every bed. In every closet. Bathtubs, behind the plastic curtains. We poked into full laundry baskets. Kitchen cabinets. We checked the washer and dryer. We opened the dishwasher, warily, scarily, because it was running. We went outside the house, trudged its circumference in the snow. We carried bowls of kibble around everywhere, and rattled it for attention. No Pittsburgh. Zero decibels of purr.

I concluded he had somehow gotten outside, and was dead in the cold. Rachel, who is way more experienced with cats, was considerably more hopeful.

But..

WHERE WAS PITTSBURGH?

You have enough information to deduce the answer.

I’ll tell you at the end of the column.

Today is the Weekend Gene Pool, in which I seek your anecdotes on a subject of my choosing. Here it comes, with a backstory.

On Thursday, Rachel and I drove to a medical appointment at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. Rachel has an eagle eye for funny signs, such as this one over an apparently prurient hospital hallway:

And this sign is right outside the Wilmer Eye Institute:

After our appointment, we had a sumptuous lunch at Angie’s, an excellent seafood place. Rachel ordered Salmon Alfredo. I asked the waiter whether he recommended the Broiled Shrimp and Cod or the Fried Shrimp and Cod.

He considered a second, and said, “the broiled is healthier ….”

I cut him off.

“I’ll have the fried,” I said.

He smiled. I smiled. It was, I think, a male bonding moment.

That’s what I’m looking for, from you, today. Funny, unexpected bonding moments that you’ve had, of any sort. As always, send your anecdotes and observations here:

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Here is what happened to Pittsburgh:

He had been trapped upstairs when the cleaners arrived. This being a small house, there is only one narrow staircase down for escape, but because there were two cleaners, and they started in different rooms, Pittsburgh’s access to the stairwell evidently was cut off. In the presence of two strangers, doing loud things, he darted for the safety of invisibility, as best he could find it, behind a wall of low-hanging clothes.

Then one of the cleaners did something that sealed Pittsy’s fate for the next few hours. It is the key to the mystery. It was a bad thing. Gi turned on a vacuum cleaner.

Kittens are notoriously scared shitless of vacuum cleaners, particularly hearing a loud one up close for the first time in their lives. Kitten ears are especially sensitive to low-frequency reverberations; they sound feral, and hangry. They come from a large thing that approaches and recedes, approaches and recedes, like a big-cat predator engaged in pre-prandial play. In mortal terror, Pittsburgh had evidently crept from his hiding place to whatever better spot he could get to without revealing his location — in this case, slithering against a baseboard into a corner of the room, behind a ladder and snaking his body under a camouflaging lump of dark-colored clothing on the floor. He lay there silent and motionless for two hours, blending with the blacks, until we found him there, seemingly glued to the floor, under the clothes, petrified.

He clearly had heard the vacuum receding into the distance as the cleaners descended the stairs. He’d had nowhere safer to go.

How petrified was he? He appeared not to recognize who we were. You could see him, hugging the floorboards, gauging vectors, planning his escape. Then he bolted, furtively low to the ground, racing past us like a bead of mercury on a tilted mirror, down the stairwell to safety.

Twenty minutes later, he sauntered up, wondering if dinner was ready.

—

Here is my favorite line, so far, from the early reviews of Melania. It is by Kevin Fallon of The Daily Beast, under the headline …

Trust Me, ‘Melania’ Is an Unbelievable Abomination of Filmmaking

Here’s the line:

Will a truly unbelievable scene in which Melania repeatedly dances to “YMCA”—the only person doing so, and using the wrong hand gestures—become a meme? Perhaps. It was as if someone accidentally turned the robot controls up too high for a brief moment, before frantically correcting.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

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Today’s mailbag:

Q: You asked about being incredibly cold. I grew up in Chicago and the suburbs. I don’t remember what the temperature was, but when I entered the house and my contact lenses clouded up from condensation, I knew it was really cold outside. – Carol S.

A: I was once walking with my wife on a bridge over the Chicago River in February. However cold it was — cold enough that all car exhausts blew thick, almost turgid white smoke — it was also very windy. The wind chill factor was glacial. I remember, midway across, deciding that I was going to die of exposure. I pulled my wife close and shouted into her ear, above the howling wind, that I loved her. It was one of the silliest, and most frightening, moments of my life.

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Q: It was Christmas break from college in 1983. My friend, Patrick, and I were driving from the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks to my hometown, Bismarck. We knew it was going to be cold, so we dressed in long johns, gloves, hats and parkas and brought a sleeping bag to use as a blanket across our laps. The wind was blowing snow snakes across Interstate 94 and it was 80 degrees below zero windchill. Even with the sleeping bag across our laps and the heater on full blast, we were cold inside the car. There was no traffic other than one small car that kept close to us. We were in the middle of nowhere, at least 10 miles from any town, when suddenly, my car’s engine stalled. I coasted to the edge of the interstate, but could not get the engine to start. The other car pulled over just in front of us. Realizing that we would freeze to death if we stayed in my car, we got out and ran to the other car. It took about three seconds but in those three seconds, we were chilled to the bone. We jumped into the back seat of the little car. I was never so glad to see a big dog in the back seat. I am so grateful to the couple (and their warm dog) who saved us. – Kris Knutson

A: Warmth is a dog’s greatest gift. In both senses. Their normal body temperature is 102 degrees. Their normal affection setting is 11.

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Q: Do you think the revolting, vulgar decorating tastes of Donald Trump will lower the price of gold?

A: Thanks for this question. (I am thanking myself; I submitted the question.)

Yes, I do, based on my personal reaction. I took one look around the garishly appointed Oval Office — particularly that mantel — and instantly, gold was devalued to me. I felt gilty.

That’s it for today.

Remember:

Also please remember Rachel and me. Suddenly, we have seven mouths to feed.